


Why Did You Leave Starfleet, Admiral?

by cottageholmes



Category: Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: M/M, introspective, the picard vineyard, this is probaby ooc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-09-29 19:29:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20441291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cottageholmes/pseuds/cottageholmes
Summary: A question to contemplate and a blast from the past, lads. This is a one shot based on the Star Trek: Picard teaser. I can already tell from the trailer that this isn't what's going on on the show so. This is 100% my headcanon.





	Why Did You Leave Starfleet, Admiral?

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Qcard Big Bang 2019!

It felt strange, not having a purpose. All his life, there had always been something for him to do. Something to direct his energy towards, something useful - especially during his time in Starfleet. 

Picard glanced out of the window onto the vineyard. It was quiet. Peaceful. It was work, but it wasn’t the same. He let himself sink back into the plush armchair with a sigh. 

Now, deep inside of him, there was nothing but a sort of chaotic emptiness. It felt like a vast lot sizzling with static energy that threatened to spill over the confines of his being, whatever that meant.

Sometimes he felt like a deposed king. “My subjects for a pair of carved saints —”* he mumbled to himself. Then again it had been his own choice to retire, and he had certainly never given anyone cause to doubt his ability or his good judgement. 

Why did he leave Starfleet? — What was there left for him to do? He couldn’t deny he was getting old. He was, fortunately, well enough, that he was sure of. But there was something, something else that made him feel.. outdated? Obsolete? In any case, like he didn’t quite belong anymore. He didn’t quite understand the feeling but it was there alright, and persistent too. He had given the matter a lot of thought over countless cups of Earl Grey and the only conclusion he’d been able to come to was that the feeling was probably amplified by his recently acquired lack of direction. 

He’d always been able to find meaning in his work as a Starfleet officer. Charting the galaxy, exploring new life and new civilisations...it had all seemed so important. Significant. Valuable. It didn’t anymore. Not in the same way it had back then, anyways. The rational side of him knew, had always known, that his work at Starfleet had been all of those things and more and that it still was, in theory. He truly believed in what Starfleet, what the Federation, stood for. Nevertheless, he hadn’t been able to ignore the feeling that had crept up on him and slowly, steadily invaded his life. 

So he’d given up everything he’d worked to accomplish since his childhood. In his lifetime. It felt like an eternity lay behind him. He wondered if there was another yet to come. Sometimes he felt slightly foolish because of that as he’d never exactly believed in a life after death. But there’d been too many anomalies, too many strange encounters for him to never have questioned the nature of life and existence as he experienced it. 

Just then, as if on cue, on the very periphery of his vision Picard caught the glimpse of a bright flash of light behind him. 

“Mon capitaine.” 

A voice from the past to which I set the lonely musings of my autumn years, Picard thought, and mentally reprimanded himself for the overly dramatic phrasing. He wasn’t exactly surprised by the visit, but he’d assumed there was nothing interesting he could offer the entity at this time of his life, after all —

“I haven’t been a captain in quite a while, Q.”

“Oh, nonsense, nonsense, Jean-Luc -“

Q stopped when he finally looked at Picard, who sighed. He was tired. 

“What exactly brings you here?”

Q leaned against the antique fireplace behind him, trying and failing to feign an air of nonchalance. 

“I’m here because it is time. Well, I say time. Not that that really means anything in the grand scheme of things. At least not to me. Or you, as a matter of fact, to be honest. Not anymore.”

“What the hell are you on about, Q?”

“My, my Jean-Luc. Don’t you remember our little courtroom date?”

“Our courtroom what now?”

Q raised his eyebrows. “Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it. Not mapping stars and studying nebulae, but charting the unknowable possibilities of existence.”

“Well, you see, I never actually figured out what you meant by that.” 

Q moved away from the fireplace and stood in front of Picard, gazing at him intently.

“Come with me, Jean-Luc.”

“Pardon?”

“That’s what I meant. Come with me.”

He couldn’t mean... that, could he? Picard felt something stir deep inside the recesses of his mind, slowly forcing its way out of his subconscious. He briefly closed his eyes. He could hear them. He willed them back. 

“I couldn’t be part of a continuum, Q, not after —“

“I know, Jean-Luc. That’s not what I’m asking.”

Picard believed him. He nodded. Q slowly knelt in front of the armchair. 

“I’ve shown you who you were once before, haven’t I? Following no agenda but my own? Surely you must have realised by now that I have a … special interest in your person that goes beyond... whatever professional or platonic mean in this case, Jean-Luc.” 

Picard raised an eyebrow. Well, that last bit was new. Or was it? Picard thought back to the numerous encounters he’d had with Q over the years and came to the conclusion that perhaps it wasn’t. He also came to the conclusion that perhaps it was not entirely unwelcome. There was a feeling of uneasiness attached to the latter, but also a sense of ... calm?

Q took his hand and slowly laced their fingers together. Up until this moment Picard had never quite got around to realising he could be this … gentle. 

“Come with me, mon cher."

Could he? … There would have been a thousand things to consider back in the day. The safety of his ship and crew, Starfleet Command, whether all of this meant he was taking the easy way out of potentially dangerous situations and the moral implications and — none of that mattered now. He had no ship, no crew. He’d left Starfleet. And as far as he knew there were no laws against running off with an ancient omnipotent entity as long as you kept to yourself. There wasn’t exactly anything left to cheat at, was there? Except life, perhaps. Humanity. 

It required a considerable amount of trust. It also required an answer, an answer to another question that Picard had never quite been able to figure out.

“Why me? Of all the different life forms and beings in the world, Q, why me?”

Q blinked. “It is hardly like you to deem yourself unworthy of-“

Picard shook his head.  
“I assure you that self-deprecation is not my intention. What makes me so different from other human beings, or in fact any other being, human or not? Why me? Why am I being offered.. whatever this is, and they aren’t? And what gives me the right to accept?”

Q looked at him with a sort of vulnerable intensity in his eyes that Picard vaguely remembered having seen perhaps once or twice before, but up until now he had always doubted Q’s sincerity.

“I think you keep me tethered to— despite my omniscience I don’t know what — but you do. I know that without you I am complete, but unhappy. I know that in all this time, during all my travels, I have never once met anyone I want to keep coming back to for the rest of my existence, Jean-Luc, and I believe you could very well call that love.” 

Q stood and began pacing. Picard found he missed the warmth of his hand as well as a couple of heartbeats. 

“Why are you different? Why have you been ‘chosen’? — Why is anyone loved?” He came to a halt in front of Picard once more. “I have no answer. But the feeling that this is what I am supposed to do, where I am supposed to be, that I take you where no one has gone before far beyond the stars fills my entire essence, my being.” Q pinched the bridge of his nose. “It is really annoyingly difficult to explain it all using something so restrictive as language, please, Jean-Luc, let me show you.” 

Picard decided that his heart was beating entirely too fast now.

“Would you mind giving me a moment to process all of this, Q? I’m not exactly used to receiving declarations of love from omnipotent beings.”

The entity looked a little paler than he had before. 

“A moment? A moment can be a million years, Jean-Luc, but yes, yes I suppose I will.” And with that he was gone. Picard immediately felt a sense of loss. The room seemed colder. Q’s presence had made it all a little better, had given him a clear objective, had filled the emptiness for a moment. A moment, or a million years. 

Q loved him. Picard did his best to let the thought spread and settle into the entire expanse of his consciousness. Again he reminisced, and this time he allowed love to colour every past encounter with the entity, every memory Picard had of him. 

Q had unwoven the tapestry of his life and shown him where each strand belonged, and, in the process, where Picard himself belonged. He smiled softly. Perhaps Q was what Picard needed to let himself come undone, unhooked, and tread the earth with a lighter step sometimes; or better yet, to not tread upon the earth at all but walk among the stars. 

Loving him was not difficult at all, and had been a long time coming. Like the sense of discontent, he realised now, the feeling had crept up on him and slowly, steadily invaded his life, but mostly undetected; and it was infinitely more welcome. And blast it, why the hell not? It was all awfully romantic. 

Picard thought about the barroom, the Nausicaan, the rush of adrenaline, the searing pain, and the bolt of rippling laughter of a young cadet with a passion for adventure and a weakness for the thrill of danger. 

That young man was still a part of him. And perhaps it was time for another adventure. Picard heaved himself out of the armchair. 

“Q?,” he asked the empty air of his living room. 

Sure enough the entity was back in front of the fireplace, expectant but noticeably nervous.

Picard took a step towards him. 

“Show me.” 

Q grinned, pulled him close, and forgot to snap his fingers as the two of them vanished bathed in a flash of bright light, gone to a place beyond the scope of our imagination — if it was a place at all. 

\---------

*Shakespeare’s Richard II


End file.
